Yes, I am now 38 years old.  Of course I feel much older with all of the stress and anxiety that I have been having lately.  So, for my birthday, my family and friends gave me not 1 but 3 celebrations. Yes that is right, 3 CAKES!  Who the hell needs 3 cakes for 1 birthday, not my waist thank you very much.  But I must admit that all 3 celebrations were unique and special in their own way.

Saturday, Melissa, Tina and Robin gave a little celebration at the crop, CAKE WAS AWEOME.  Thank you very much Melissa, my hips are a bit wider today!  Then on Sunday, my family came over and mom got a Carvel cake, because ice cream goes right through the band! How sweet was that.  I did have a little slice of that.  Ok so now I’m really feeling old, and had a few too many cocktails with mom on Sunday.  Monday’s hangover and doctor visit with Joey, threw the willpower out the window.  AND Joe ‘baked’ me a cake, yes you read that right HE BAKED!  It was the most thoughtful thing, and it was very YUMMY too!  So, a birthday that will take me 2 weeks to lose the 5 pounds that I gained from the celebrating.  Next year I say we just SKIP it!

That’s all for today! Just basking in my cake glow!

Wow, it’s been way too long since I made a post here.  I guess I’ve been neglecting my blog just like I’ve been neglecting my body.  The past few months have been horrific to say the least.  Besides my weight going up, up and up!  My little man was diagnosed with cancer.  That in itself is enough to drive anyone to the comfort food and start binging.  I must say that I haven’t really gained anything, but I haven’t lost anything either.  Some would say “look on the bright side, you stayed the same!”  In my previous life, before the band, I probably would have gained at least 30 pounds in the last 2 months.  But I STAYED THE SAME! 

I need to seriously re-evaluate my life and what I want for me.  I got this band put in me so that i can be healthy for my children, and see them grow up and have kids of their own.  Then to be faced with the possibility of losing one of my dear kids, was a shock.  There are parts of me that totally blame myself for this happening to him, maybe I should have fed him better foods, or restricted soda, and junk, incorporated more veggies.  I think all the time, what if this happens to one of the girls, so, I am going to try my hardest to not let it be from what they consume!

Read a newsletter from The Mojo Coach the other day that really hit home.  Why am I sabotaging my self?  She gave a bunch of different examples of what could be be keeping you fat, and I swear they all fit me to the bill! 

So for my birthday, this coming Monday, I am going to start fresh.  I used to think that getting my band was my fresh start, but that start seems to have stalled.  I am going to be using my blog now to keep myself on track with food exercise and accountability.  My goal is to write at least something everyday whether it be a little paragraph, or a book like this!

If you made it this far, thanks and come back to keep my honest!

I am now fully aware that I can probably never eat a Hot Dog again.  Maybe once I reach goal and have some of my fill taken out, but not during my losing stage.  The past two or three times that I have tried to eat America’s past time favorite, it has only come back to haunt me.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am not talking bun here, just dog, kruat and mustard.  Then 20 minutes later, I’m in bandster hell.  If you have a band you may know what I am talking about.  If you have a band and do not, I hope you never find out what it is.

What are Band friendly foods you ask?  I sometimes wonder the same things myself.  It was so easy in the beginning.  The first two weeks after surgery was liquids, first clear, then creamy.  Anything that would normally go through a straw, but do not use a straw.  The next two weeks mushy foods like tuna salad, chili, runny oatmeal, and smooth mashed potatoes.  Easy as pie, yummy pie!  Off track!  Ok so then you start incorporating solid foods, this is the hard part because unlike every other freaking diet I have tried in my life, this IS NOT A DIET!!!!!  There is NOT A PLAN!  NO BAD FOODS!  There is just a guide of what to avoid, foods that ‘might’ get stuck.  Foods that have been know to get stuck in some people.  So, you start small, grilled chicken, loaded with fat free BBQ sauce so it doesn’t get stuck and cut into the tiniest pieces, my 1 year old twins ate bigger pieces than I was.  Wow that wasn’t so hard!  So time passes and you tend to get sick of eating the same things every day.  So you try new foods, some work good, some not so good.  Those that are not so good, you may give a second chance to one day, if again they fail you, you swear them off forever!!!

I will never eat scrambled eggs again for the rest of my life!  I will never eat a bowl of cereal with milk again for a long time.  I have now added hot dogs to the list, and my list I’m sure will continue to grow.  For some reason, I cannot get chocolate or cheesecake or ice cream to the list.  I will continue to eat things that I know I should avoid because they are ‘not so’ good for a bandster, but damn I want that. 

One bite of something usually gives me enough satisfaction to move on, and I am completely thrilled by that.  I can totally have a bite of cake and be ok with that.  I can totally have ONE bite of each thing I like at Thanksgiving dinner and be OK with it.  I am OK with what I have become in the world of eating when I need to be, I am NOT ok with it when I NEED to have more then a bite.  When I NEED to be comforted with my food, this friends was NOT fixed by my band.  This friends will not be fixed by any Weight Loss Surgery out there, this can only be fixed by work, hard work.  I am ready to face my problems and fix my issues, and I hope that I have found a way to do it.  I am taking the Spring Into Action 2009 Series by Melissa McCreery and Debi Silber.  I will report back on whether this will help me overcome my challenge of using food for comfort.

Oh to go back to the day that I first got my band and start all over again.  I wish and dream that I could do that every day.  It was so easy then to stick to the ‘rules’ and eat the right things.  Fear of the unknown kept me on the straight and narrow for about 6 to 8 months of perfect eating and drinking, little bit of exercise thrown in there, and following the ‘rules’.  That fear is the most important thing that I lost.

There are ‘rules’ that you must follow when you have a lap-band (or any other bariatric surgery I’m sure).  Do not drink with your meals (I do follow this one).  Do not drink for 45 minutes to an hour after a meal (Not so good with this one).  Do chew your food to a mush like consistency (Not so good with this one either).  Do eat your protein first, then veggies/fruit, and carbs (sometimes a meal is mashed potatoes).  And the list goes on.  Not so hard to follow when you first have your new best friend implanted around your tummy.  The first few weeks, you can’t/don’t want to eat much of anything but liquids.  Then you move on to soft foods, like fat free/sugar free pudding, apple sauce, creamy soups, fat free re-fried beads with fat free cheese.  Than you start to incorporate solid foods a few weeks later, all the while you are losing a tremendous amount of weight which totally rocks!

Solid foods are another planet unto-themselves.  They take the most trial and error, still to this day more than a year out, I find foods that I have a hard time eating.  I pretty much stick to grilled chicken with low fat anything to make it wet, tuna fish with lots of low fat mayo and tomatoes, thick chili, Protein shakes for breakfast (no longer), very tender steak (my favorite) and tried to eat whatever was for dinner that night usually without much luck (more on this at a later time).

So, come to the end of summer and I HIT a brick wall (some call it a plateau) with my weight loss.  I settled around 50 pounds down with about 35 – 40 more to go.  I was happy with myself and my new size 10 jeans and the compliments I was getting from every corner I turned.  Life was great!

Here SHE comes: “Miss Stress Eater”!!!!  My work got to be very stressful around October with news of excess re-training for new roles on top of our regular jobs. And let us not forget the 3 kids at home all wanting for my attention all the time.  All employees having to return to offices (no more telecommuting), and the threat of a Union strike being eminent (hence the re-training).  My new ‘role’ and I&R3, I had no idea what that was but it didn’t sound like fun when I read that it involved 380 hours of web-based training and 56 hours of leader led training in another state.

So what is one to do, I stress, I eat.  That is my coping mechanism, my band didn’t fix this?  OH  NO!!!  This can’t happen, why didn’t my band fix this?  I went through surgery to stop being able to binge on this crap food, why isn’t it working.  I must have sat in my office for hours crying one day trying to figure out why!!!  Then I realized that the band is around my stomach, not my head! 

So in the past 7 months I have put back on 10 of the 50 pounds that I lost since banding, due to stress binging on mainly Little Debbie Nutty Bars.  I cannot stop eating those darn things.  Why couldn’t the peanut butte recall affect those?  And also to drinking my favorite green apple vodka and Crystal Lite Pink Lemonade.  I know that these are not the best things for me to be consuming but they are helping me get by.  I do manage to get in some real food, like my yogurt with granola in the morning, a decent lunch from the cafeteria (grilled chicken), and a few bites of dinner.

I am signed up to take Melissa McCreery’s Seminar Spring Into Action.  I am truly hoping that Melissa and Debi can help me get my mind back in the game so I can get back on track.  I will report back on my progress, fingers crossed!

Also a little prayer that the Union doesn’t strike would be really appreciated!!!

I get that all the time, people ask me why I did this to myself. It is such a hard question to answer honestly out loud. Of course then I would have to admit that I am a totally failure and have lost all self control.

So, back on February 5^th of 2008, I had WLS (weight loss surgery). I got a Realize Band inserted around my stomach to form a 3 – 4 ounce pouch. I have lost to date about 67 pounds from the day that I started this whole adventure. And believe me it has been a wild (not so easy) adventure.

I guess you could say that I’ve had a terrible self image since I was a kid. I always thought I was ‘fat’, ‘ugly’, not-worthy of being around the ‘cool’ kids. So, I tried to find my way by eating junk food and drink soda, and beer, yes beer at the ripe old age of uumm 14. Cool huh! NOT! Looking back at pictures of me then, I wasn’t that bad, I wore size 9 jeans, currently my goal size!! If I just knew then what I know now, that it wasn’t my body that had the problem, it was my head, maybe things wouldn’t have gotten so bad.

FAST FORWARD….I have 3 kids, a lovely 7 year old boy who is the twinkle in my eye, only he thinks otherwise (need to work on that), and 2 year old twin girls who are tornados in tap shoes. The world’s cutest kids. THAT MY FRIENDS is WHY!!!

Before I got pregnant with the girls, I didn’t think I could get pregnant because of my weight, 237! WOW, don’t even think my husband knows that. But, surprise, my boy’s persistence in wanting a baby brother paid off with him getting 2 sisters. Careful what you wish for my dear. Problem was that before pregnancy, I could barely move to play with J, now I have 3 kids to entertain and play with. We would go to the boardwalk and put J on the rides and how sad was he that mommy couldn’t go with him cause my fat butt didn’t fit in the seat. And how bad was it that we couldn’t go to the park to play because I couldn’t walk that much. He loves playing with match box cars, but I couldn’t because once I got on the floor I could never get back up. How was I going to play with 3 kids now, take 3 kids to the park, to the boardwalk, and play cars on the rug. "How the heck am I going to do this?" is all I could think at night. Then staying up all night driving back and forth to the hospital for a month and taking care of 2 babies with my mom and husband really took me down. When I went back to work, I would just sit in my office and cry and eat, and cry and eat. This absolutely got me no where, but bigger and more depressed. I HAD to do something. When I was home I would eat nothing, and pretend I wasn’t hungry, just take care of babies and be a good mommy. Life was really sucky and there was no way out for me. One day while watching TV at night, I saw that commercial with the Lion and the kitty cat for the Lap-Band, I instantly had a warmth come over me like this was it for me, my sign. The next day at work, instead of crying I started doing research and found a doctor. Made an appointment, of course he didn’t take insurance so it would be out of pocket and then I would submit and get reimbursed, but I didn’t care I needed to do this now! I went.

Well, that was the worst. He required me to do a 6 month pre-surgery diet, I told him that if I could succeed at a diet I wouldn’t be sitting here. So off I go with my booklet and start my diet, this is in October mind you. I get a call I’d say beginning of December that I cannot use this doctor because he is out of network and my new insurance will not allow me to continue to see him. I must find a new doctor or skip the surgery. OMG, what am I going to do? So, I find a new doctor, one that is actually closer to my house, and make an appointment. I meet Dr. Abkin, what a great guy, I’m too skinny "WHAT"! My previous doctor’s diet made me lose too much weight. NOWAY! You must have measured me wrong I’m only 5′2" not 5′3" try again. So, I take off my sneakers and VOILA! I’m IN! Surgery in 3 weeks!!! AM I FREAKING CRAZY!!!

February 5^th 2008, the first day of the rest of my life. I am now a bandster and forever will be. I will have trials and tribulations along the way and will need to relearn how to do things that I have taken for granted for the past 36 years. Things will be tough, but I will get through them, I know in my heart that this is the right thing for me and my family and this will make me a better person, a healthy person.